A community that came together to save one of east London’s most iconic queer-friendly spaces this summer hopes it will be able to stop the venue closing for good through shared ownership – or so they say the city’s entire drag and cabaret scene is at risk. In July, the owners of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (BGWMC) announced their intention to sell the venue as soon as possible, leaving many self-employed drag performers and cabaret acts who relied on the club as a form of regular income struggling to make ends meet.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has contacted the venue for comment. Over the past 20 years, the venue has supported and built the careers of many drag and cabaret artists who are able to experiment with their work in a space that is safe and LGBTQ+ friendly.
When ShayShay first moved to London from the US, they instantly fell in love with the venue and went from attending events to performing as a drag artist twice a week and hosting their own shows there. “For the time coming up it was one of my main sources of both income and employment, I know that’s still the case for a lot of people,” ShayShay said.
“When I met some other queer people, they suggested that the real queer scene isn’t in Soho, it’s in East London, it’s in Bethnal Green, it’s in Dalston.” Performing at the venue allowed ShayShay to explore her gender and identity and helped establish her career.
ShayShay has since moved on to producing events and co-founded The Bitten Peach, a pan-Asian cabaret collective that has performed at the venue in the past. They said the sudden closure of the venue sent the community “through a loop” and many performers have struggled to secure work as venues schedule events well in advance.
They added: “We’ve got fewer and fewer cabaret venues in general in London, the number has gone down over the last decade or more. There’s just fewer and fewer venues. We’ve done events at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and the BGWMC and now we’re not doing events at any of these locations.
“We’re struggling to figure out where we can do an event of this size, in a venue that won’t require an arm and a leg to use, and in a venue that wants to support us and we want to support them, and a place where our queer audience will feel safe is amazingly hard to find.”
After the rally was held, the Friends of Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, a newly formed co-operative of 39 people from the local area, successfully submitted an application to Tower Hamlets Council to register the venue as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), meaning the community has a chance to bid on the building if it ends up on the market.
Now the council has designated the venue as an ACV, the group is setting up a fundraiser to help secure the future of the venue, which is due to be launched in the coming weeks. The group is supported by Principle Six and the Community Shares Company, who helped with the highly successful Sister Midnight campaign, a music venue which is the first community-owned venue in Lewisham.
Nick Keegan, a variety organizer at Equity, said: “When the club is closed, up to 100 performers a week are out of work, including self-employed cabaret and drag performers. We’re helping the campaign but it has to be a community-led campaign, a community buy is a huge task, it’s a huge fundraiser so we will support in any way we can as a union.”
Between 2006 and 2022, the number of LGBTQ+ venues in London has fallen from 125 to 50, according to data from the Greater London Authority. Separate data from the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) found that 3,011 night-time businesses closed in London between March 2020 and December 2023, the fastest decline anywhere in the country.
Nick said: “Arenas like this are a pillar for the community but also for performers and Equity members as a trade union. For cabaret and drag artists careers are so uncertain and breaking into careers can be so expensive and difficult. This arena has represented a community space that allows artists to develop into the bigger, more polished professionals that we have in our industry.
“Our priority – whatever happens next – is to get our members back to work as soon as possible.” The municipality did not comment on the campaign.
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